A financial system can be fixed, but can a planet?

We must focus on climate as well as finance.

European Voice

4/15/09, 9:42 PM CET

Updated 4/12/14, 5:42 PM CET

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, identified four areas crucial to a successful outcome of the UN climate conference in Copenhagen later this year (‘Four steps towards a Copenhagen deal’, 2-9 April). While he may be right on the details, there is a wider problem: European leaders are so focused on the financial crisis that they are failing to take the lead on the climate crisis.

That is a mistake. The economic impact of climate change could make the credit crunch look like a minor wobble. Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist, has predicted that the equivalent of between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product (GDP) could be lost every year because of climate change. In contrast, the International Monetary Fund predicts that global GDP will fall this year by 0.75% as a result of the slow-down.

While it would be foolish to underestimate the seriousness of the current recession, ignoring the warning signs of an impending climate crisis would be a far graver error of judgement. It may be possible to fix a broken financial system, but how do you fix a broken planet?

The EU must tackle carbon dioxide emissions head-on, cut its costly dependence on oil and coal and restore growth and jobs with substantial green investments, including in the developing world. European leaders need to put climate change back on the agenda if they are serious about fixing the recession and averting the biggest economic crisis of all time: climate change.